The Four Cases

What is a case?

You might have never heard of cases, but if you speak English, you've seen them in action.

Look at the words "he" and "him," for example. They both mean the same thing, so in a sense they are the same word. But we use them in different situations: "He threw the ball." "The ball hit him in the face." We use different words for the same person because in each sentence the person has a different function - doing the action or receiving the action. The different function means we need a different case --> different words.

Now, let's extend that idea of nouns being changed based on their function in the sentence and do it for all nouns (pronouns like "he" and "him," common nouns like "table" and "bottle", etc.), also include changing the article it uses (a different version of "the" for different cases), and add endings to adjectives based on the case of the word they describe. That's what you get it German.

That might seem like a lot, but I'll explain it step-by-step so you are sure to understand it. And let's start with a short definition of cases:

The case of the noun tells you what role the noun plays in the sentence and its relationship to the other nouns in the sentence.